Cold Fusion: Has the Holy Grail of Energy arrived in E-Cat?

It may not be directly about cars, but the demonstration by Italian scientist Andrei Rossi of Cold Fusion Energy production E-Cat could change the car world.

Cold Fusion – or low-energy nuclear reaction as scientists prefer to call it – has been the Holy Grail of energy production since it was first mooted in the 1920s by Austrian scientists Paneth and Peters.

Essentially, cold fusion is a low energy, contained nuclear reaction which doesn’t use fossil fuels and produces no radiation. The problem is that the laws of thermodynamics say Cold Fusion is impossible. But Italian Scientist Andrea Rossi has demonstrated the E-Cat in front of an invited audience – and it appears to work.

The E-Cat uses nickel powder and hydrogen gas and a secret catalyst to produce energy. An initial electrical source is used to heat the E-Cat which then went on to produce an output of 470kWh of energy an hour for the next 3-4 hours, yielding a net energy output the equivalent of 60 gallons of petrol.

Despite the demonstration of E-Cat being observed, the only ones allowed a close look at the device were the unnamed customers for the Cold Fusion reactor, rumoured to be the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems unit (SPAWAR), who will now pay for further development.

If – and it’s a huge ‘if’ – E-Cat proves to be what it purports, the world will change completely, with endless supplies of self-sustaining, cheap and clean energy available, completely eradicating our reliance on oil and fossil fuels.

What that will mean for cars we can only guess, but theoretically all you would need is a small E-Cat kicked in to life by a battery to produce enormous power and enormous range.

Which will make plug-in BEVs – and even hydrogen fuel cells – look like something from the Ark.

Ok, there are some plants on this form. That is to say people connected with selling this idea are posting here as 3rd parties that are not connected the company or device. I’ve seen this a few times, I wonder if they hire a firm to do the posting, or just stay up late on the Internet posting on all the forms and news sites themselves, do you think they even use a proxy?

The Tata Motors/ MDI Air Car, a compressed air car, uses a HC hydrocarbon burner to heat-up the decompressed stored air used to run it. That burner is “shoe in” replacement with one of Rossi’s LENR hydrogen burners. I suggests that a Negre air engine would be a very suitable prime mover for energy upgrading required to produce electricity from LENR.

Too bad then that Rossi’s October demonstrations didn’t provide us with definitive evidence that his technology actually works. Therefore, I would suggest caution when evaluating it.

I doubt the device works, but cold fusion doesn’t necessarily violate the laws of thermodynamics. It would theoretically utilize the energy of the destruction of a small amount of mass to produce net energy, just as nuclear fission does. The total entropy of the system still increases.

Gray: If you’ve been following this since March you should have figured out by now that it’s almost certainly a scam. Rossi has refused to allow any 3rd party to verify that one of his E-Cat units works. All he does are silly desktop “demonstrations” using his own instruments that are too short to rule out a chemical source for the energy output. After months of this he shows a 1MW plant that he doesn’t allow anyone to verify sold to a secret customer. A person who has one of the greatest, if not the greatest, inventions in human history doesn’t act like this.

The scientists are using only one correct component Palladium. But it needs to be moleculerized to work and other elements and a non-element is needed in order for it to work properly. It is not about destruction like Travis said but it is about binding and creating energy from the binding. I could show them in under a year but there heads are to big for outside input.

E-Cat looks very promising the problem is this will not be a free ride, once world governments catch up and wise up they will tax the hell out of it ( someone has got to pay for the bailout of the corrupt wold banks ) .

On the up side it will create a lot of new jobs and be great for the environment. All you engine designers, re-study NOW!! steam could make a come back.

I don’t think steam cars will win. I think there will be a LENR reactor insight a Stirling engine and that produces electricity to power the eCar. And the best: Cars change from energy consumer to an clean green energy producer. eCar with LENR-Stirling Engine will supply electricity to your homes an the grid. Your LENR4you

With a Rossi Cyclone engine in your car, pickup, boat, or truck you’d could go for 6 months between refueling. And the fuel cost is so low you could keep the motor running at idle all the time in the north to keep your car warm when you weren’t using it, or running the AC in the south to keep it cool when you weren’t driving it. The benefits from a cost and environmental standpoint would be phenomenal (and maybe we should let Ford develope these cars since they aren’t “owned” by our government)!

Steam power will win in a power range over 50kWel. But not in the lower power ranges under 20kWel. And this is what a eCar needs in the mean time to drive. Cars drive in there live time only 2 -10%. 90% they park.

Not so. Refer to my post of November 16, 2011 at 2:38 am below. As long as LENR can be controlled (which it apparently can now), it will work well on engines as low as 15.8 hp and certainly in the 100 to 330 hp range:

The engine pictured has a cutoff of 15.8 hp, runs in the steam zone of 500F to 700F, and weighs just 18 lbs without condenser and alternator. If organic fluids are used rather than water, the engine could operate on temperatures as low as 200F.

Note this also lists a series of engines they plan to build that require operating temperatures of 500 to 1,000 F, which is well within the range of the E-Cat. I’m sure they’d be able to make engines with horsepower ratings anywhere between 100 and 330 once the demand exists.

Well, IF this is real, then we could simply set up cold fusion power generators to generate electric power, then charge batteries with them. Or, yeah we can have steam engines. Either way, as long as it frees us from oil suppliers it could only be good.

Still a very big ‘if’. But simply generating electricity from the E-Cat to be used to recharge batteries in an electric car wouldn’t overcome the issues of range and recharging time, but what it would do is take away the reliance on oil (with all the issues that would cause in regions whose wealth depends on oil – another subject) which would make oil much cheaper and remove the notion of Peak Oil. Making ICE cars viable forever!

Several problems with the internal combustion engine: It burns fuel at high temperature which creates a suite of pollutants; in other words, it doesn’t burn the fuel efficiently. And I don’t know what you’re paying for gas, but around here it’s above $3.50/gallon, which cost me about $0.12 per mile just for fuel and I have a pretty fuel-efficient car.

On the other hand, the Cycle engine (based on over 1,000 hours of tunning and testing), has achieved verified thermal efficiencies above 30%.

But here’s the kicker–Rossi figures the fuel in his E-Cat will need to be replaced every 6 months and cost around $20. Now, if you drive your car 1000 miles per month at the end of 6 months you’ve gone 6,000 miles on 2,000 cents of fuel cost. I don’t care if you’re burning cow manure or road apples, nobody can get down the highway on a fuel cost of 1/3 penny per mile. (Even if it cost $100 for the E-Cat fuel recharge, you’re getting down the highway for under 2 cents per mile!)

And the pollutants from the E-Cat? None. Yup, that’s right–no CO2, no nitrous oxides, no gas fumes from the tank, there’s not even any oil drips from the oil pan ’cause the Cyclone doesn’t have one–it lubricates with water and even goes without a transmission (instead, it has steam available at 3,200 psi working through 6 cylinders).

What’s the temperature limit of the E-Cat you ask? A natural, built-in safety feature is that the unit stops reacting when the nickel powder melts, which is 1,453 C, or 2,651 F. But the Cyclone works just fine on steam heated at 500 F. I’m no Einstein, but it looks like the E-Cat will be able to generate the necessary temperature and certainly the price is right. All you’d have to do is replace the fuel burner in the Cyclone with an E-Cat of the proper size and you’d have to be reminded with an e-mail when to go fuel up your Rossi Cyclone Mercedes every six month (or why not a Rosii Cyclone Ford 150?). Or maybe they’d have a warning light for fuel; a fuel gague might work but you’d forget to look at it after a while. Maybe you’d get your fuel recharge from UPS or the USPS.

Sweet!

And so “green” windmills and solar panels would soon become a thing of the past (along with OPEC)!